Myth and Truth
- Michael Haldas
- 14 hours ago
- 5 min read
“I believe that legends and myths are largely made of “truth,” and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear…story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened?...The Father and the Spirit are involved in history, but only the Son becomes history.” (J. R. R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Humphrey Carpenter, Metropolitan John of Pergamos)
“Myth, then, contrasts with mythology, which are the stories leftover when the ritual participation has fallen into disuse. There is a connection here with the popular use of myth as an untrue story, but it may not be obvious at first. We tend to think that people stop participating in religious rituals because they don’t believe in the related stories anymore, but in my pastoral ministry and experience, I have observed that the opposite is usually true. More often, belief falls away after participation falls away, showing that conviction flows from conditioning. It is the ritual participation in the story that plants it firmly within the human person…Why do most people regard the ancient pagan myths as fanciful, untrue stories? Not because they have made a careful investigation into the stories as truth claims, but rather because they no longer have the experience of being joined to the story through ritual. I will not go into it here, but given this reality, it is interesting at least to raise the question of what happens to Christians when Christianity is de-ritualized. When people stop ritually participating in the stories of Christianity, does the Christian myth turn into mere mythology for them? Or what if the rituals change, and the participation is in another kind of story?” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“Myth connects us to those of the past and to those of the future. Through myth, we grasp the continuity of all of God’s Creations, of all of the soldiers in the Army of Christ: those who came before Him to prepare the way, those who fought beside Him during his 33 years on earth, and those who came and come after Him to do His Will against the Enemy, even unto death. “Behind all these things is the fact that beauty and terror are very real things and related to a real spiritual world,” Chesterton wrote in 1925 in the chapter on myth in The Everlasting Man. “To touch them at all, even in doubt or fancy, is to stir the deep things of the soul.” Myth, then, leads us to beauty, which leads us to truth. Truth leads us to the Good of the One, the Creator of time, space, and all things, who sent His only Son to redeem the world.” (Bradley J. Birzer)
“Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable—perhaps everything….It is not that ‘God’ is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather, it speaks to us as a Word of God.” (Clyde Kilby)
“The Enlightenment project did not intend to idolize the world. Rather, it hoped to desacralize the world in order to liberate man from the power of religion. As we said, the first scientists attempted to complete that western journey which so alarmed C.S. Lewis, away from seeing the world as an icon. In a non-sacred world, reason was supposed to reign supreme and men would no longer serve mythic powers or church officials, the philosophers of the Enlightenment promised. But if there is no divinity beyond this world, then creation becomes the ultimate frame of reality. At that point, we are more idolatrous than the pagans and the primitives ever were.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“...the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened […] it is God's myth where the others are men's myths.” (C.S. Lewis)
“In Greek, paradox means literally “against opinion”; that is, a paradox rubs against our accepted notions of reality. We like to believe that we already know everything, that we have everything figured out; this is why true paradox is always painful. Paradox conflicts with our prejudices, challenges our assumptions, and flies in the face of our collective “truths.” This is why we prefer to call myths “fairy tales” and to relegate them to children. This is why we like to explain myths as fanciful inventions of primitive and childlike minds. If we take myths seriously as the statements of reality that they are, then we find all our comfortable platitudes, all our fixed notions of “truth,” called disturbingly into question.” (Robert A. Johnson)
“We have internalized the myth of progress and utility. We not only believe that the world and the things around us can be better, but that it is our God-given task to make them so. We push this same cultural mandate into the Scriptures as well. We imagine the parable of the good stewards (those who invested their talents of money and made a profit) to be stories of how God praised and rewarded them for their productivity and usefulness. We fail to wonder what actually constitutes faithful stewardship in the Kingdom of God.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The myth of progress operates on us in a pernicious way simply because we, society, have made progress an idol, breaking the second commandment. It’s not that progress is intrinsically bad, but rather our orientation and approach to it is. We have practically deified progress and elevated it to the highest human goal. Our primary goal in life is our loving union with God. Therefore all ‘progress’ should be a result of and through our loving submission to the Lord. This is an uncomfortable and unpopular truth that is dismissed as archaic and the misguided notion of unsophisticated people.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
“By confessing and repenting of our sins, we find healing from self-inflicted wounds that bring only pain and weakness to our lives. Through these and other spiritual disciplines, we become more fully our true selves as the people God created us to be in the divine image and likeness. Doing so is neither easy nor popular, of course. It requires rejecting the popular myth that we are isolated and self-defining individuals who find meaning in gratifying our desires for power and pleasure however we want. Accepting that lie will lead only to idolatry, regardless of which worldly agenda we give our hearts to. We will find true joy and freedom in accepting the high calling to become more like God holiness, not in rejecting it. To turn away from who we are in God is to diminish ourselves and pursue a path that leads inevitably to misery and despair. As those who bear the divine image and likeness, we will find fulfillment only in Him.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
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